Shaw’s teaches food lessons to Ipswich campers

Tuesday

Aug 23, 2016 at 10:18 AMAug 23, 2016 at 10:18 AM

By Abi Langsner ipswich@wickedlocal.com

Ten Doyon Literacy and Science Camp students walked into Shaw's Supermarket on High Street with clipboards and questions poised at 9 a.m., Thursday, Aug. 18, to find out what Shaw's does to eliminate waste and to conduct a nutrition investigation.

Shaw’s staff and management welcomed the students and their questions.

Prior to their visit, the 4th- and 5th-grade students had been studying nutrition and food waste. Students became so invested in learning about added sugar in foods that they wanted to conduct their own food investigation. They discovered that while yogurt provides both calcium and protein it can also contain a considerable amount of sugar. These student-scientists wanted to find out which brands and flavors of yogurt contained the greatest and least amount of sugar per serving.

There was just one problem, lack of access to a wide variety of yogurt nutrition labels and so the field trip to the grocery store.

The tour began with student questions: “What does Shaw’s do with expired food or produce that is bruised?” one student asked.

When food expires or produce is too imperfect to sell, a company collects and sorts the food waste, feeds what it can to swine, and composts the rest.

In addition, Shaw’s donates many of its day-old bread products to the Ipswich Food Pantry.

The students also learned the differences between the “sell by,” “best by,” and “use by” labels on food packaging.

Shaw’s also works to eliminate waste with a detailed recycling policy.

The students also received a behind-the-scenes tour of the store. Students got chilled visiting the store’s giant refrigerator, learned about the importance of cleaning fruit in the produce preparation station, marveled at the massive meat grinder behind the meat counter, saw cardboard crushed in receiving, tasted frosting from giant tubs in the bakery, pet a live lobster in seafood, and even got to enjoy some snacks in the staff lounge.

In addition, students also saw how Shaw's compacts and organizes all of their recyclables, trash, and food waste.

Students carefully analyzed the many brands, flavors, and serving sizes. They came away with some great discoveries.

When describing her findings to the class one student stated, “I looked at the amount of sugar in the yogurt I usually eat and compared it to a serving of ice cream. The ice cream had one gram of sugar more. The yogurt I eat only had one gram less of sugar than ice cream. This was really surprising!”